Consolidating content means simply to combine a number of things into a more effective format

Other departments might call it 'reducing' or simply just 'note-taking'.

Some students luckily do not need to do this. They can be given a textbook with lots of information and just by reading that information they can retain it and apply it when being tested. If you are one of those students then this page is perhaps a waste of your time. However, this particular skill seems to be quite rare. After all, if for most people reading pages is all that it takes to learn effectively then there would be little point to having a teacher; we could all just teach ourselves.

Students study lots of subjects in school and finding a way to reduce all the information into something that is effective for them alone is crucial if they are to fulfil their potential.

Students in music have to routinely consolidate content for the particular topic they are covering and are then tested on that topic to see if their note-taking has worked.

They then go one step further and are made to complete single exam questions that are related to that topic they have made notes for.

Many students actually do not know how to consolidate information and they either just copy the information, reduce it too much that they learn very little from their notes or they even create notes that they do not understand when they look back much later on.

Hopefully the guide below and the examples will help students to do this effectively.